This Business and Moment...

[NickK]

Of course, when I point out that in the last 6 months we’ve lost, over 10 people from a team of around 40, he didn’t seem to think it had anything to do with how broken things are.. (4 of those people quit less than 12 months from their start date)

My manager is one of those people who seems to have a distinct inability to see things from the perspective of others. It’s something that I’ve practised very hard at over the years - to try and put myself in the shoes of others.

People don't leave hard work - they leave bad managers/leaders.

I got turned down (well I got e-binned) for the Lead Technical Program Manger role. I suspect I would have not fitted in anyway. I count that as a blessing.

Good to hear you've made a decision.

 

[Felon]

I can see why, did they try and offer anything to retain you? I guess as you've quit over issues the manager disagrees with rather than over pay etc.. then presumably not?

He asked me if there was “anything they can do” to keep me, but I was just brutally honest and said that I just don’t think it’s for me…. I mean even if they threw me another bunch of RSUs - it wouldn’t make any difference, I’d still have to be working insane hours over silly deadlines, on projects which are all basically slow motion train wrecks…

I've never encountered a manager who when they are the reason though unreasonableness that people are quitting in doves is anything other than of the opinion these people were deadwood.

To best explain what the guy is like, I’ll provide the below, 100% factual account of what happened to a colleague:

They hired this guy from the other side of the world, paid to relocate him to the EU (Dublin) at a decent salary for an L5. He split from a relationship, relinquished ties and made the move. Once he was on boarded, his project for the entire year was to just run an automated system, like a factory worker. This guy is highly skilled, speaks good English and was a good guy, yet they drove him into the ground with a rubbish project. When he complained - nothing changed, he got into a really bad place, became an alcoholic. One time he joined on a call and his apartment was half trashed….

Eventually the manager said “if you don’t complete the work, you’ll fail your performance review and will probably end up on a PIP”

So this poor guy, depressed, thousands of miles from home (in the middle of covid) works like hell, gets it done - then they move him to that team permanently…… (this is after he complained numerous times) anyway - I warned management I told them to show him some love, they didn’t and he quit and went back home..

The whole thing just made no sense, they just trashed a bright, decent talented guy, wasted time training him, smashed him over the head with crap nobody wants to do… The whole thing was dumb.

 

[NickK]

That reminds of a meeting I was once at where I was asked to explain the process on a project that had started 3 (maybe more) months previously based on the project plan in front of us. Unfortunately upper management had not included any of the people doing the project, including myself in any communication or meetings that the project had started or that we were on it.

Bit awkward.

Unrealistic deadlines trends to be habit or cultural in an organization. It's unlikely to change. I've walked myself when I've realized it wasn't working out over similar.

Yup- I should have resigned in my last role given I was busy coding, saving their ass from deadlines, whilst sat in the hospital car park in Lille as my father-in-law died from covid whilst my wife+mum were doing a routine visit. Only reason I was not in the hospital was due to the 2 people max restriction per visit. As a direct result the project was saved and we got paid.

I'm just at the verge of 'self awareness' where execs would simply resign, in the past I've fixed the problem. The last place I should have resigned rather than try and jump the impossible hoops of the new guy trying to fire me as a <2 year short term employee just to avoid paying redundancy (they closed my base office and sold the company the next week). I should trust my gut sometimes.

The stubborn, steadfast, dependability of sorting crap out (inherited or situational) has been a great quality up till that point!

 

[Felon]

People don't leave hard work - they leave bad managers/leaders.

Yeah it’s true.

I mean I’ve been at AWS for about 18 months.. As an L6 the first 12 is really being dazzled by the awesome tech and scale you get to play with, so you don’t really get the full Amazon experience until around 12+ months into the job.

It’s around that point where the cool tech and enormous projects you get to work on, sort of become “meh” because the whole thing is being ruined by crazy management.

When I first joined we had a much better manager, she would fight our corner - defend us from crazed program managers who wanted everything last week, she was hard as nails… She quit and went elsewhere lol, that’s when this dude took over and it’s the opposite.

With this guy, if the program managers and VPs are pushing for something, he doubles down and gets in their side, like he doesn’t have the balls to say no to anybody and that’s one of the problems with the entire company.

Nobody dares say no, so the moment that get assigned something - they say “yes!”, end up having to work 18 hour days, miss the deadline anyway (because it was impossible) burn out, get depressed - then quit.

It’s dumb lol.

 

[OspreyO]

In one company I went to the bother once of producing charts showing how the extra hours and feature creep were producing an upward curve of errors that were becoming unsustainable as they were producing more errors than they could fix.

This was after working 3 straight weekends. The CFO denied that was the case. I left. But I heard he been let go a few months later. The investors pulled much of their funding. They are still going though so they kept the lights on somehow.

 

[NickK]

In one company I went to the bother once of producing charts showing how the extra hours and feature creep were producing an upward curve of errors that were becoming unsustainable as they were producing more errors than they could fix.

This was after working 3 straight weekends. The CFO denied that was the case. I left. But I heard he been let go a few months later. The investors pulled much of their funding. They are still going though so they kept the lights on somehow.

CFOs can be a pain if they're simply vetoing what was originally agreed in terms of expansion supporting the business case to make up for their failings elsewhere to save money.

Our unit had it's own full on FC with specialists, unsurprising with a budget of $2.7Bn/3years and given individuals were writing checks they shouldn't have been, I can understand why he seems overly busy trying to claw back and difficult when I chased planned/agreed approvals.

 

[OspreyO]

I think the metrics speak for themselves. If you are burning people out for no gain or a net loss in productivity. You got to change how you are doing things. Otherwise you're just racing to a point of collapse.

 

[dowie]

I mean I’ve been at AWS for about 18 months.. As an L6 the first 12 is really being dazzled by the awesome tech and scale you get to play with, so you don’t really get the full Amazon experience until around 12+ months into the job.

It’s around that point where the cool tech and enormous projects you get to work on, sort of become “meh” because the whole thing is being ruined by crazy management.

I mean at least you stayed for 18 months and only had 6 months of **** to deal with, have heard HR managers (from other firms) make claims like "good IT people sometimes only stay for 18 months", shorter stints (if not as a contractor) raise eyebrows but a bit longer than a year and it is immediately apparent on paper that you clearly passed your probation/didn't have it extended and it's much more easily seen as being your call to leave the company rather than the other way around.

Obviously at the other end of the scale in terms of red flags is being somewhere for "too long" and not progressing... then you get seen as likely being a "non-regrettable leaver".

Were you at a "FAANG" before coming into AWS as a L6, or indeed a smaller tech company that uses that sort of "level" system?

I think the metrics speak for themselves. If you are burning people out for no gain or a net loss in productivity. You got to change how you are doing things. Otherwise you're just racing to a point of collapse.

I think they've been doing it for a while now yet they've expanded massively. They had like 650,000 employees in 2018 yet by the start of 2021 they'd doubled that to 1,300,000.

I doubt they're losing productivity in general!

 

[NickK]

Ouch - I've been in a 380,000 employee company. The unit I was in was 10,000 by itself - basically the size of most "moderate/large" companies. They got rid of 50,000 in one go.

First the expansion, then the rationalisation/standardisation and then then the productivity drop. Hiring more managers and haemorrhaging good staff loosing ability that drives up the expansion rate. Until the shaky tower all falls down like Jenga.

 

[Felon]

Were you at a "FAANG" before coming into AWS as a L6, or indeed a smaller tech company that uses that sort of "level" system?

Not at any of the “FAANG” but one of the big game studios, they had a similar hierarchy- most of these companies are sort of copying the levelling system to some degree.

I think I’ll likely go back to something medium sized, where I get involved with work that’s a bit more meaningful, rather than being stuck 100 miles underground in a massive engine room, where you never see the fruits of any of your labour.

In any case, my cv and experience is top tier now, so I’m quite looking forward to seeing what I can get. There are a lot of opportunities out there right now, many of them offering good flexibility, work life balance and pay.

 

[dowie]

In any case, my cv and experience is top tier now, so I’m quite looking forward to seeing what I can get. There are a lot of opportunities out there right now, many of them offering good flexibility, work life balance and pay.

Sounds like that additional few months of stress was worth it at least for a solid brand name that can open doors etc..

 

[HangTime]

Whilst I'm sure it is true for many people, personally I don't completely subscribe to the idea that people leave bad managers rather than bad work. The only time I've left a job with nothing lined up first I had an excellent manager. It was just the remit of my role, and the team sitting under me and grown massively and was just way way too much to deal with. My typical day would be perhaps 6 hours of meetings spanning half a dozen different programmes / initiatives, constantly running between them with 0mins to adapt to context switching, then any time I wasn't in meetings would be either preparing for meetings or trying to catchup on emails. The only thing that had been keeping me afloat was a 4.5hr daily commute, which gave me a bit of time on the train to reply to mails, review CVS / documents or what not. You'd then get periodic fire-fighting that would be very annoying to have to shoehorn around a full diary. Essentially I got fed up at always having to do a mediocre job of most things due to time/capacity constraints, and having no time to look at innovation, exploiting new technology etc. Literally every single day would be running at >100%, absolutely no respite like I've found you normally get periodically in some jobs. Taking leave was mega stressful because it just meant a mountain of work piling up to come back to.

Now of course you could argue that if my manager was any good he would have done more to support me. But I honestly don't think many people could have done better, he himself was ultra-busy and he did protect his team (certainly didn't hang people out to dry like the scenario described a few posts above). He'd help to push back on some things and was generally very well liked and respected by the wider team underneath him. Admittedly, there were a few things he could have handled better, he could have pushed the CIO/HR a bit harder on the need to recruit specific roles to support me a bit more, but he was probably the best boss I've had. I guess for me I put a realism lens on my expectations of what a manager can and can't influence; having sat on the IT leadership team I knew enough about how things worked behind the scenes that I could judge whether they were doing a decent job of it or not. what constraints they were operating under etc.

 

[randomshenans]

Final interview for somewhere tomorrow, no idea what I'll do if I get offered the role as whilst I've been kind of keeping my eye out and I'm not happy with some things where I am, I still don't know if I'd actually leave.

How did it go?

Anyway ranting now, but 3 days after deciding to resign I definitely have no regrets at all.

Dude, I'd have been way more honest I think lol I cannot hold back on those things. Well done though and you did the right thing it sounds like.

So this poor guy, depressed, thousands of miles from home (in the middle of covid) works like hell, gets it done - then they move him to that team permanently…… (this is after he complained numerous times) anyway - I warned management I told them to show him some love, they didn’t and he quit and went back home..

The whole company loyalty thing for me is total BS now days. They (*for the most part, may be some edge cases) don't care about you, they care about getting what they need to get done to make them look good and get their bonuses off your back.

Now of course you could argue that if my manager was any good he would have done more to support me.

Maybe "bad management" is more apt. Doesn't need to be just your direct manager, but bad company management, creating **** structure, poor operating models and culture. It's management. Where it's direct or not, someone runs things and allows this to be the case.

 

[Ev0]

How did it go?

Went well I think, about 8 people on the panel in the end mixture of leadership and people who do the same role.

Was told it would be a more technical interview but frankly there was only one basic tech question, likely there to filter out the cowboys more than anything.

Finding it hard to articulate, but it’s probably the first set of interviews I’ve had where it’s not just been standard interview questions or generic tech assessments. I’m an SME in my field at the moment and it was more discussing my thoughts and opinions on various aspects of their industry and it all seemed to go down well.

They want me to have a chat with their CTO this week so will see how that goes!

 

[randomshenans]

They want me to have a chat with their CTO this week so will see how that goes!

Great stuff! That's positive and sounds like the interview was a bit different, which could be a good thing!

 

[HangTime]

Maybe "bad management" is more apt. Doesn't need to be just your direct manager, but bad company management, creating **** structure, poor operating models and culture. It's management. Where it's direct or not, someone runs things and allows this to be the case.

Yeah, I thought a bit around that and again it has some merit but isn't black or white when I consider it holistically in terms of what I could expect management to do. The employer in question was in the top10 best companies in the UK to work for the 3 prior years in a row; on a macro level, they had decent culture, approach to management etc. It's just a small proportion end up with bad work via a combination of factors which is why I think the likes of myself left due to bad work rather than bad management. I think it's difficult to rapidly change operating model to adapt to changes, especially because the real decision makers can't really see things from the point of view of all their staff. It's difficult for them to appreciate the levels of complexity involved with some work - even the SMEs can't forsee all of it, so the Exec with everything else on their plate have no chance. I guess ultimately the only solution would be to completely re-architect the operating model such that it could react faster to change in future, but that restructuring in itself could be quite disruptive (the old adage about rebuilding an airplane whilst it is in the air).

I guess what I'd say is that a good manager will make it more likely people stick around for longer through periods of bad work (if I'd had a worse manager, maybe I would have left before). I was pretty proud of my record whereby as manager of a team I only had two people (of around 15 perms) leave in 3.5 years and they were both new mums who wanted a complete change of career / lifestyle after their year of maternity leave. One of those was underperforming and replaced with someone much better, the other was very good but completely understood her decision and she's now retrained in a completely different industry. In just over a year since I left, they've had 8 resignations from my old team that I know of. Plus a couple of my peers left too (ironically one joining Amazon).

I do get the fact that management plays a big part in things and you can directly or indirectly tie a lot of things back to that, but ultimately some organisations will have bad work that someone has to do. Someone has to clean the toilets, someone has to implement regulatory change, etc. Management can help make that work less unpleasant but there will constraints.

 

[Ev0]

Great stuff! That's positive and sounds like the interview was a bit different, which could be a good thing!

I’ve found as I’ve progressed through my career interviews become less and less like the traditional sort and testing your knowledge, to more seeing what insights you have, your opinion, and as much as I hate to use the term as it’s a bit of a buzz word/term, your thought leadership.

Also got the impression with one of the interviews I had with a VP there that they would be grooming me for something bigger in the relative short term.

Will see what happens tomorrow

 

[thewanted]

@Screeeech I saw someone post a Solutions Architect role for Global Networking - Backbone at AWS on LinkedIn. Have you considered moving into a customer-facing role instead? Might be easier than working in the service teams.

 

[Ev0]

Ouch - I've been in a 380,000 employee company. The unit I was in was 10,000 by itself - basically the size of most "moderate/large" companies. They got rid of 50,000 in one go.

Sounds like something IBM would do!

 

[Felon]

Mental.

Sometimes I think it's just me being a big wuss and I can't take the pressure, and I'm weak or whatever, then I learn the following two things;

Ex-colleague number 1, who I'd known and worked with for a number of years (ex principle engineer from Microsoft in Redmond, and ex distinguished engineer from Cisco) one of the best guys I ever met, moved himself and his family across the country to work for AWS in Seattle. He's 10 months in and has just handed his notice in - he can't take it anymore either. I had a video chat with him the other day and he looked MISERABLE, I felt really bad for him. It's stupid because guys like this - you absolutely want to retain them, and AWS just pounds them into dust and they quit, it's just frankly stupid. I mean why bother employing him - he's barely done any work, he's been onboarding this whole time - they spent all the money moving him and they've just kicked the **** out of him and he's predictably left, I don't understand why it's like this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Ex-colleague number 2, Who I'd also worked with and know very well, a software engineer has been at AWS for around 9 months. He was in a team of 8 engineers working on a specific project - they were getting battered, 5 of them walked out and left, leaving only 3 engineers in the team. Management didn't give them any more time - and kept bashing them with a stick, so he's in the process of quitting too and has at least 2 offers on the table. I mean I really don't understand what AWS are trying to do to people, it's less like a job - and more like some weird game where you have to see how long you can take it for..

I had a chat with my manager last week, a sort of catchup chat to discuss my decision and stuff. It's interesting how he always likes to turn a situation around and make me the problem. For example - in the situation where we had to deliver something in a borderline impossible timeframe - apparently it's up to me, to go and remove the blockers, do everything I can to hit that date and if I can't, I have to provide reasoned, documented explanations for why we can't make the date.

I argued that this approach is simply crass, because in the final analysis it just boils down to a basic exercise of me explaining the bleedin' ******** obvious, that we can't jump fifty feet in one go. This idea that we get given impossible deadlines and heaps of pressure - then when we predictably fail to hit the date, we have to have an essay explaining why we couldn't achieve the impossible - it's just bloody stupid. I can't be arsed to work like this - not because I'm crap, or I don't care - I just can't be arsed with being in this stupid, stressful and ultimately pointless situation.

@Screeeech I saw someone post a Solutions Architect role for Global Networking - Backbone at AWS on LinkedIn. Have you considered moving into a customer-facing role instead? Might be easier than working in the service teams.

Nah - I think I've had enough of Amazon, I mean I've got a 1:1 with our L7 manager on Wed - a guy who I really get on with and quite like, so it'll be interesting to hear what he has to say.. But to be honest, I think I'm done with the place, unless they pull something very special out of the hat to try and keep me, and even then - I don't see why they would I think I moan and say no too much lol.

I have a few other things cooking, already been offered a job at a startup - looks good, also talking to Twitter and a few other companies, so plenty of opportunities out there..